I recently published an article in the journal Baptist History and Heritage titled “The Making of a Baptist Universalist: The Curious Case of Elhanan Winchester.” Winchester (1751–1797) was a rising star among the eighteenth-century Regular Baptists on the Eastern Seaboard. He was a noteworthy revival preacher and successful pastor in South Carolina before becoming pastor of the influential First Baptist Church of Philadelphia in 1780. Though Winchester was not yet thirty years old, the church wooed him for a couple of years before persuading the young preacher to accept a pastoral call to Philadelphia.

Winchester’s honeymoon in Philadelphia was short-lived. By spring of 1781, Winchester had been ousted as the church’s pastor on account of his belief in universal restoration. He had been wrestling with these views for several years, though he only began speaking about his beliefs in late 1780. After provoking a nasty split in FBC Philadelphia, Winchester founded a Society of Universalist Baptists in Philadelphia. He became close friends with Benjamin Rush, the famous physician and American founding father. Winchester later migrated to England, where he convinced William Vidler and Joseph Priestly to embrace universal restoration. They in turn emerged as the key Universalists and Unitarians in that country. Winchester later returned to America to help found the American Universalist movement before his death in 1797.

Unlike the more rationalistic Universalists of the following century, Winchester was what I call a “revivalistic Universalist.” He was convinced that hell was real, albeit temporary. But even a temporary hell was a terrible reality. Winchester urged all people to turn from their sins and trust Jesus Christ as their Lord. Better to be reconciled with God in this life and enter immediately into heaven in the next life than be converted at some point postmortem after centuries of suffering in hell. In every other aspect of his theology, Winchester was by all accounts a mainstream evangelical. He preached as hot a gospel as George Whitefield, even if hell had an expiration date in Winchester’s theology.

For Winchester, hell functioned much like purgatory–it is a place where unforgiven sins are burned away. The key difference lies with the status of the one who is suffering. For Roman Catholics, those in purgatory are believers who are being fitted for heaven. For Winchester, those in hell are unbelievers, though eventually all of them will see the beauty of Christ, turn from their sins, and be saved. Love wins.

Winchester argued for Universalism from his view of the atonement. A former ardent admirer of the High Calvinist John Gill, Winchester took the doctrine of penal substitution very seriously. But as he continued to see large numbers of people converted under his ministry, Winchester grew increasingly uncomfortable with a limited or particular atonement. Eventually, he gravitated toward an unlimited or general atonement. But he did not stop there. Winchester became convinced that Christ’s dying for all people meant that all people must be saved. His peculiar understanding of general atonement was criticized by Calvinists, for obvious reasons, but it was also rejected by Arminians such as John Wesley, who believed Winchester’s atonement theology was more logical than it was biblical.

Unfortunately, other Universalists moved further from their evangelical roots than Winchester. Affected more by the Enlightenment than biblical exegesis, Universalists in both North America and England increasingly rejected original sin, the blood atonement, and the necessity of conversion. Most also became Unitarians, rejecting the full deity of Jesus Christ. Far from being revivalistic, most Universalists were critical of any view of Christianity that emphasized conversion, preferring to see Christianity more as an ethical movement. Though often cited as one of the key founders of modern Universalism, Winchester was an anomaly because of his more-or-less evangelical, pro-revival outlook.

If you want to read more about Winchester’s theological pilgrimage and the story of his controversy with the Baptists in Philadelphia, see “The Making of a Baptist Universalist: The Curious Case of Elhanan Winchester,” which is found on pages 6–18 in the fall 2012 edition of Baptist History and Heritage.

Since the early 1980s, dozens of scholarly or semi-scholarly books, dissertations, articles, and essays have been written about the Conservative Resurgence (CR) in the Southern Baptist Convention. The CR in the SBC began with the Houston Convention in 1979 and lasted through the end of the century. I would argue that the best ending date for the CR is 2000, the year the Baptist Faith and Message was revised. Though the “national” CR ended over a decade ago, statewide versions of the CR continued in some areas throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century.

The CR goes by many different names, depending upon one’s interpretation. The period has also been called the “Inerrancy Controversy,” “The Fundamentalist Takeover,” “The Fundamentalist-Moderate Controversy,” or simply “The Controversy.” Each of these labels contains some truth, though I opt to call the period the Conservative Resurgence because I believe this label best captures the heart of the issue. Grassroots theological conservatives, displeased with the leftward drift of many denominational servants, used democratic means to effect a leadership change in the Southern Baptist Convention.

This list of resources is not intended to be exhaustive, but it does represent some key works for those interested in studying the CR in greater detail. For the sake of space, I have not included any dissertations, though plenty have been written. Since my personal theological sympathies are with the resurgent conservatives who gained control of SBC leadership during the CR, my bias is reflected in my comments about these sources.

Primary Sources

Walter Shurden and Randy Shepley, eds., Going for the Jugular: A Documentary History of the SBC Holy War (Mercer University Press, 1996). This is the best place to start if you want to read sources such as press releases, excerpts from key sermons, resolutions, etc. The editors are moderates, so the introduction reflects their perspective.

Paige Patterson, Anatomy of a Reformation, 2nd ed. (Seminary Hill Press, 2004). Patterson was one of the three key leaders among conservatives, along with Paul Pressler and Adrian Rogers. This pamphlet reflects Patterson’s personal thoughts on the CR, including the major issues at stake and the rationale for the conservative strategy.

Paul Pressler, A Hill on Which to Die: One Southern Baptist’s Journey (B&H, 1998). This book is Pressler’s autobiography. The latter half focuses on the CR. A personal anecdote: I was flirting with becoming a CBF-friendly moderate in college until I read this book. It literally changed the direction of my ministry.

Cecil Sherman, By My Own Reckoning (Smyth & Helwys, 2008). Sherman was perhaps the most important moderate leaders in the 1980s and 1990s, so the second half of his autobiography provides an interesting counterpoint to Pressler’s aforementioned memoir.

L. Russ Bush and Tom J. Nettles, Baptists and the Bible, 2nd ed. (B&H Academic, 1999). Bush and Nettles argue that most Baptists have historically affirmed biblical inerrancy, though the term “inerrancy” is of recent vintage. This book, which was first published by Moody Press in 1980, has the distinction of being a secondary study in historical theology that functions as a primary source for one studying the CR.

In 1985 and 1988, the journal Theological Educator published special editions dedicated to “The Controversy in the Southern Baptist Convention” and “Polarities in the Southern Baptist Convention,” respectively. Articles were written by key figures on both sides of the controversy. Theological Educator is the former faculty journal of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

James Hefley, The Truth in Crisis, 6 volumes (Hannibal Books, 1986-1991). This series provides a journalistic account of the CR written from a conservative perspective. Though clearly biased and largely uncritical in nature, Hefley gets some of the “human stories” of the CR that are missed by most other studies of the era.

The Summer 2003 edition of The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, the faculty journal of Southern Seminary, was dedicated to “Theology, Culture, and the SBC.” The articles interact with Barry Hankins’s book Uneasy in Babylon, which is discussed below. The Spring 2005 edition of The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology was dedicated to “The Conservative Resurgence in the SBC.”

Bruce Gourley, The Godmakers: A Legacy of the Southern Baptist Convention (Providence House, 1996). This is not really a purely historical work because Gourley critiques the theological and especially ethical motivations of the “fundamentalists” who took over the SBC. For Gourley, the CR was more about power politics than theological renovation.

Barry Hankins, Uneasy in Babylon: Southern Baptist Conservatives and American Culture (University of Alabama Press, 2003). In this important book, Hankins argues that SBC conservatives were at least as concerned with a socially conservative political agenda as they were biblical inerrancy. I’m sympathetic to Hankins’s thesis. The Summer 2003 edition of The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology included several articles that interacted with Uneasy in Babylon, including a rejoinder by Hankins.

The October 1993 edition of the journal Baptist History and Heritage was dedicated to the CR. The contributors wrote from a mostly moderate perspective.

This is the third post in a three-part blog series on recent trends in Andrew Fuller Studies. My first post focused on important works from the twentieth century. Yesterday’s post was dedicated to key scholarly writings published since the turn of the twenty-first century. In today’s post, I will discuss other aspects of the renaissance of Fuller Studies that is currently underway.

Reprinted primary sources have made Fuller’s writings very accessible to scholars and other readers. In 1988, Sprinkle Publications reprinted a three-volume edition of The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, which had been first published by the American Baptist Publication Society in 1845. Tom Nettles wrote an introduction to the first volume. The “Sprinkle Edition” was both a fruit of the renewed interest in Fuller Studies and a catalyst for introducing many scholars and thoughtful pastors to Fuller and his legacy. In 2007, Banner of Truth reprinted a one-volume edition of The Works of Andrew Fuller(see right), which covered the same material as the more expensive Sprinkle Edition. The “Banner Edition” included a short introduction by Michael Haykin. Solid Ground Christian Books also reprinted several individual works written by Fuller, including his Memoir of Samuel Pearce (2005), The Backslider (2005), and Expository Discourses on the Book of Genesis (2009).

Several semi-scholarly or popular works related to Fuller have been published in recent years. In 2001, Haykin compiled and edited a helpful introduction to Fuller’s spirituality. In 2007, John Piper gave a biographical talk on Fuller at the Desiring God Pastor’s Conference. Piper’s talk was subsequently published as an e-book in 2012 titled I Will God Down If You Will Hold the Rope (Desiring God, 2012). Numerous blogs and primary source websites include material related to Fuller. Though currently dormant, The Elephant of Kettering was a multi-author blog dedicated to Fuller Studies. Several of the contributors were established scholars in Fuller Studies or went on to write dissertations related to Fuller.

Since 2007, The Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies (AFCBS) at Southern Seminary has generated much of the interest in Fuller Studies, particularly in North America. The AFCBS hosts an annual conference, several of which have been dedicated to Fuller Studies. The proceedings of the conferences are due to be published beginning in 2013. Several of those collections of essays will include material related to Fuller, some exclusively so. Forthcoming volumes that will include one or more chapters related to Fuller include Andrew Fuller: The Reader (2007 conference), Baptists and the Cross (2010 conference), Baptists and War (2011 conference), and Andrew Fuller and His Friends (2012 conference). The 2013 AFCBS conference will focus on the topic of Fuller and Theological Controversy.

In addition to the annual conferences and related books, The Fuller Center also publishes a scholarly journal. The former journal, Eusebia, published several Fuller-related articles and dedicated one entire issue to the theologian. The Fuller Center’s current journal, The Andrew Fuller Review, will soon transition into a refereed scholarly journal focused on Fuller Studies and related topics.

By far the most important development in Fuller Studies is the forthcoming scholarly edition of the Works of Andrew Fuller. This multi-volume project is sponsored by the AFCBS and will be published by Walter de Gruyter. Each volume will include a critical edition of one or more of Fuller’s writings, critical annotations, extensive indices, and a substantial scholarly introductory essay. The model for the project is the Yale University Press edition of the Works of Jonathan Edwards. Haykin serves as the general editor of the Works of Andrew Fuller. Volume editors include Haykin, Tom Nettles, Robert Oliver, Ryan West, Nathan Finn, Chris Chun, Steve Weaver, Stephen Holmes, and Michael McMullen, among others. Lord willing, the first volumes will begin appearing in late 2013 or early 2014.